SNS is a platform that strengthens social relationships through free communication and information sharing among users, and has developed along with the popularization of smartphones, but it also has negative aspects such as personal information leakage and psychological effects.
Among the big issues in the 21st century IT market, the expansion of the smartphone market and the rapid development of social network services (SNS) are probably the most prominent. Things that were previously thought to be impossible are happening easily with the power of SNS. SNSs have become a place where tens of thousands of people can empathize and communicate with each other, or a place where people can petition for help when they feel injusticed. The impact of social media on modern society is enormous. In this article, we’ll look at the meaning and history of SNSs, their functions, the dysfunctions they cause, and the direction of their development.
The dictionary definition of SNS is ‘an online platform that creates and strengthens social relationships through free communication, information sharing, and networking among users’. Most of them are based on the Internet (web), and some use simpler foundations such as email or instant messaging. The Network Nation by S. Roxanne and Murray Turoff, published in 1978, introduced the idea that social networking sites are “individual computers linked by electronic communications, and that these computers mediate real human social interaction and contact. In reality, there were earlier attempts to form social networks through computers and other communications devices, such as Usenet, Apache, LISTSERV, electronic bulletin boards (BBS), and Electronic Information Exchange Service (EIES). David Andrews’ The IRG Solution, published in 1984, was the first to systematically outline how the (then nascent) Internet could form a social network.
Through these efforts, full-fledged SNSs based on the Internet began to emerge. The Well (1985), Theglob.com (1994), Geocities (1994), etc. in foreign countries, and Naonuri and Clairvoyant in Korea are representative examples. Most of the early SNS services above had the function of real-time chatting between users or sharing personal information and personal creations, which can be considered as a combination of instant messengers and blogs. In addition, services that connected people using email addresses also appeared, such as Classmates.com, which emphasized the ability to find school classmates, and SixDegrees.com, which had the ability to find connections across two bridges. Later, with the development of programming technology and the expansion of Internet traffic capacity as the driving force, services that were larger than the early SNSs began to emerge, and in 2013, Facebook, Cyworld, and Twitter, which are familiar to people today, were developed and became extremely popular. After the rapid popularization of smartphones around 2010, SNS became even closer to people’s daily lives by allowing them to use SNS on their mobile phones, and the impact of SNS is growing day by day.
SNSs have a number of functions, the most important of which is the ability to strengthen personal relationships. Most social networks can be used to deepen relationships between people you already know offline, or they can help you meet new people online. It can be an easy way to connect with people you’ve known for a while but haven’t seen in a while, or it can be an easy way to connect with new people with similar interests. Paradoxically, these connections are strengthened by building fences. In Boyd and Ellison’s article “Why Youth Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” (2007), most SNSs used by teens have the ability to categorize users based on personal information and allow users to friend each other, creating small online societies. This is similar to the phenomenon where water and oil, when poured together in a container of the right size, do not mix, but instead form a cluster of droplets. In SNS, a small network (or small society) is formed among people with similar interests, the same alma mater, the same hometown, and other common boundaries. The initial model of Facebook, the most widely used SNS in Korea, was also a closed community through internal email address verification among Harvard University students, and Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard student at the time, slightly modified it to create the current Facebook. The difference from the original model was that instead of limiting the scope of the site to Harvard alumni, the site allowed users to create their own walls by managing their own friend lists. This autonomy in creating walls allowed users to deepen their connections in a convenient way, which is why Facebook is now the number one social network by market share.
In addition to strengthening connections, SNSs fulfill many other important functions. They can be used to maximize the effectiveness of corporate marketing, social commerce, public sector use, gaming, and more. The marketing of companies in Korea and abroad through Facebook or WhatsApp has already been very successful and is familiar to the public. Traditional advertising is a simple method of frequent exposure on web pages. In contrast, social media advertising can make a stronger impression on consumers because users can directly access a Facebook page or a mini-homepage representing the company, give their opinions on the advertisement, and actively participate in events. Hyundai Card’s promotion of Stevie Wonder’s super concert or Kyobo Books’ establishment of a review platform using social media are examples of successful corporate marketing. Social commerce, which offers a steep discount if a certain amount of products are sold, has been popularized in other countries, and social commerce sites such as Coupang and Timon became popular in Korea around 2010. Although it seemed to be fading away for a while, TriPass recently released an app called ‘Wonder Cube’, which presented a new model of combining SNS and social commerce, and it is expected to be a new interest. It is also common to see public interest campaigns or promoting the good image of an organization through SNS, and social games based on web SNS are also increasing. In particular, thanks to the expansion of the smartphone market, many social games have become popular, starting with the explosive popularity of Anipang based on KakaoTalk.
As SNS has been deeply integrated into the public’s daily life, its dysfunctions have also been highlighted. One of the most serious problems is the issue of privacy. As SNSs expose information to acquaintances, they also expose personal information to strangers, which can lead to minor leaks that should be kept between friends, or worse, to criminals stealing personal information such as residences and social security numbers (not just through exposure, but also through hacking) for various purposes. In fact, on July 26, 2011, the personal information of about 35 million people stored on the then-popular SNS Cyworld was hacked in South Korea, and the case is still under trial. Meanwhile, in foreign countries, an SNS site called Quechup collected email addresses of its members and used them to send spam emails, causing a great controversy. The first problem with entrusting personal information to SNS sites is that most SNS users are unaware of the risk of exposing their information, and the second problem is that there is still no way to prevent sophisticated hackers from stealing personal information. Foreign social networking sites such as MySpace and NetLog work with public law enforcement agencies to prepare for data breaches, but this is only to facilitate the cleanup after the fact, not to prevent hacking in the first place. In addition, the issue of personal information (privacy) leakage caused by SNS is constantly emerging, such as the debate on whether it is right to collect data on people’s behavior patterns without permission from SNS sites to obtain data for social science research.
In addition, research on the psychological effects of SNS on users is also revealing the dysfunction of SNS. John T. Cacioppo, an American psychologist researching at the University of Chicago, has argued that social media relationships are essentially virtual, making people feel even more disconnected, and his article was published in Newsweek. A September 2011 report by the American Psychological Association, “Social Networking’s Good and Bad Impacts on Kids,” found that frequent exposure to social networking, especially among adolescents, can make them more prone to negative emotions such as depression and anger. The virtual nature of social networking also has the side effect of making us feel lonely and depressed, even though we are in contact with many people.
SNS has already become an indispensable element of modern people’s daily lives due to its convenience and pervasiveness. Despite the above dysfunctions, SNSs continue to evolve as we seek solutions. In particular, the recent development of SNS is closely related to the smartphone revolution. Previously, cell phones were used to simply send text messages or make phone calls between acquaintances, but with the smartphone revolution, it became possible to connect to the Internet reliably and quickly at a cheaper rate than before. This naturally led to the use of SNS on smartphones, and not only did SNS become more commonplace, but the trend was to integrate the functions of SNS and cell phones. KakaoTalk, which was a messenger program, is gradually incorporating social network service functions, and Facebook has released the Facebook Messenger app, which is a separate messenger app. In addition, apps have also been released that utilize the functions of mobile phones more effectively with SNS, such as an app that allows you to input your friends’ birthdays from Facebook’s database and display them on your phone’s calendar. In other words, smartphones are the most important keyword in the current development of SNS. In fact, Facebook, which made it easy to enjoy SNSs on mobile phones, is currently dominating the market compared to Whatsapp, which was based on computers. In the future, each SNS will evolve accordingly whenever there is a change such as the smartphone revolution.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which states that individuals with different traits arise, but only the traits that are best suited to the situation are passed on to the next generation, is a good model to explain the rise and fall of modern SNSs. Today, many SNSs with various characteristics are emerging, but as we can see from the precedents of Cyworld and Facebook, SNSs that do not change appropriately will eventually become ‘old SNSs’ as their usage declines, while SNSs that change appropriately will continue to dominate the SNS market.
Therefore, when considering the direction of SNS development, it is important to consider the ability to flexibly respond to user needs and social changes, not just adding new features or changing the design. It is also necessary to maximize the positive aspects of SNS and minimize the negative aspects. This will require continuous efforts to educate users, improve awareness, and enhance technology. We all need to work together to ensure that SNSs continue to have a positive impact on our daily lives and society.
